A Welcome Murder Page 4

  I played dumb. “What?”

  “You want to blow your chance at getting into Congress over a crazy piece of ass like Dena Marie Conchek?”

  “Her name’s Xenakis now.”

  “Right, Xenakis, because she’s married. She’s crazy and married. And you’re married. And you must be crazy, too, or you wouldn’t have gotten within a mile of that loon on legs.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “How do you think? The same way everyone else in town is finding out. That stupid bitch is telling everyone she checks out down at the grocery that the two of you are getting married.”

  “Married?” I rubbed my temples. “I should have my head examined.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me, junior. You need to break it off, now.”

  “I will. I will. Right away. It’s done.”

  I didn’t. I couldn’t. I still loved her. We met two more times. I told her that she had to quit talking or it would sink both of us. She promised she would, but I knew it wasn’t her nature. Two days after our last meeting, Allison walked into my office, calm as can be, and asked, “Are you screwing Dena Marie Xenakis? Don’t lie to me, Fran.”

  I thought my face was going to combust. I lied. I denied it—looked her square in the eye and lied my ass off. I said I was friends with Dena Marie, and that she had always been in love with me and she was devastated when we had gotten married and she had never gotten over it and she was always pleading with me to get a divorce and marry her but I would never, ever be unfaithful. It was a lie of titanic proportions, but I took psychology courses at the FBI Academy and I know how to relax under intense questioning. Allison got upset, but I know in her heart she believed me. It’s not something of which I’m particularly proud, and I haven’t seen Dena Marie since.

  CHAPTER THREE

  JOHNNY EARL

  I did my time in several different prisons, but the majority of it was spent in the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. My first roommate was an accountant who had gotten busted in an interstate insurance scam that bilked the life savings out of a couple hundred elderly people. After he was released, I had a single for about a month before two guards showed up at my cell with the biggest son of a bitch I had ever seen in my life. He was six foot six, with a flattop, a scar running from the corner of his left eye to the bottom of his jawbone, a protruding brow, and deep-set eyes. His head was made up entirely of right angles and was the size of a toaster oven. His jawbone protruded on each side like a pair of giant fish gills, and I swear I could have grabbed hold of it and done chin-ups. He was carrying his bed sheets in his massive hands.

  After you’re in the penitentiary for a while, you get a feeling for which inmates are bluster and which ones could really hurt you. It took me about two seconds to determine that this monster fell into the latter category. If I had hit him in the head with a baseball bat, I don’t think it would have fazed him in the least.

  No sooner had he walked into the cell than he said to me, “Do you cater to Jews and niggers?”

  And I said, as though I had a mouthful of dog piss, “Cater to Jews and niggers? Not in this lifetime.”

  One of the guards, a black man named Oscar Davenport, who I liked, turned and glared at me, his lip curling in one corner. I was sorry to upset Oscar with that kind of talk, but I didn’t have to share a cell with him. I had to share one with this Cro-Magnon, and I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot.

  He smiled, revealing a gold-capped tooth on a lower incisor, and said, “Excellent.” He reached out to shake my hand, and it felt like I had put it inside a first baseman’s mitt. He had hands like hams, with cracked and rough knuckles that looked as though they could do a lot of damage. “I don’t hanker to live with no Jew- or nigger-lover.” Then he pointed at my lower bunk and said, “You’re sittin’ on my bed.” In one quick swipe, I stripped off the sheets and then set up residence upstairs.

  For the record, I don’t have anything against blacks or Jews. I spewed some venom after Andre Edwards knocked out my teeth, but I’m pretty much a live-and-let-live kind of guy. But here’s the thing: When you get to prison, they don’t care that you once tripled off of Nolan Ryan or how many touchdowns you scored in high school. Every other prisoner in the place looks at you and thinks, “How can I take advantage of this sumbitch?” When I got to prison, I was scared witless. I also was bald, so the instant I walked through the doors I was singled out as a skinhead, and every black guy in the place put a target on my back. I had to pick a side, and I certainly didn’t fit in with the brothers, so I picked the white supremacists.

  My new bunkie’s name was Alaric Himmler, which I’m sure wasn’t the name his mother had given him, but I never questioned him about it. He said Alaric meant “ruler of all” in German, or something like that, and it was a sign that he was destined to be the leader of a new and great country.

  I said, “Uh-huh. Got one in mind?”

  He claimed to be a general in the army of the New Order of the Third Reich, which the best I could tell consisted of a bunch of similar-minded nut jobs roaming the wilds of Utah or Idaho or Montana in a “country” that he called the Aryan Republic of New Germania. Not only was he the supreme commander of the army, he also was the president of the Aryan Republic of New Germania. “Where exactly is New Germania?” I asked.

  “The Aryan Republic of New Germania,” he corrected me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Where is the Aryan Republic of New Germania?”

  He put an index finger the size of a kielbasa to his lips. “I can’t tell you. It would put your life in danger,” he whispered.

  “Thanks,” I whispered back, thinking that he didn’t know for sure, either.

  Because he considered himself a citizen of his own country, the general believed that his imprisonment was a violation of international law. Some days he claimed to be a political prisoner, and other days he recited violations of the Geneva Convention because he was a prisoner of war. His imprisonment actually had something to do with the possession and transportation of illegal firearms, which I heard were rocket launchers, but the general was always vague on the details. He said he couldn’t discuss issues of state because he was sure a listening device had been implanted in the cell and agents of the federal government of the United States were eavesdropping.

  Over time, the general, as he demanded that he be addressed, took a liking to me. For this, I was grateful, because absolutely nobody fucked with him, and that gave me a degree of protection. When Andre Edwards smacked me with the pipe, for no damn reason other than he didn’t like my looks, the general beat him within an inch of his sorry life. In return, all I had to do was enthusiastically agree with every word he uttered about blacks, Jews, Hitler, and Germany. And I did. I agreed with every single word, and with great gusto.

  Six months before my release, the general grabbed me by my shoulders and said, “You have been very faithful to me.”

  I blinked, having no idea what he was talking about, and said, “You’re welcome.”

  “I am rewarding you with a position of power in the New Order of the Third Reich.”

  I was thinking, Oh, sweet mother of Christ, this is a fucking nightmare. But I said, “I’m honored, General.”

  He smiled and said, “You are hereby inducted into the army of the New Order of the Third Reich and granted the rank of colonel. You will report directly to me.”

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I saluted him and said, “Thank you, sir. That is a great honor.” But I was thinking, I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.

  He shared his belief that my genes would make an excellent addition to the gene pool of the Aryan Republic of New Germania. Actually, what he said was, “You will make excellent breeding stock. It’s critical that we preserve the white race.” He draped a heavy arm around my shoulder and said, “Two of my wives have sisters who will make fine wives for you. Are you good with that?”

  “Two wives, you say?”

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nbsp; He grinned and arched his brows. “Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

  To give you a better idea of the type of genius I was dealing with, the general was walking past the chapel one day and overheard ­Marshall Goldman conversing with a rabbi in Yiddish. Marshall was a scrawny little guy who took an Internal Revenue Service agent hostage and drove her across six states trying to explain why it had been his constitutional right not to pay taxes for seven consecutive years. The general cornered Marshall a few days after overhearing the conversation, used a massive hand to pin him against a wall by his neck, and said, “I want you to teach me to talk German.”

  “I don’t speak German,” Marshall said.

  The general squeezed up under Marshall’s chin, lifting him off the ground. “Don’t lie to me, Jew boy, I heard you talkin’ to that preacher of yours the other day in German.”

  The general was cutting off Marshall’s air, but he eked out, “You’re right. I’m sorry I lied. It was German. I’d be happy to teach you.”

  Marshall began teaching the general Yiddish; the general believed he was learning German. At one point, Marshall had the general saying, “Ich bin a shtum tuches un,” which the general believed to be the German phrase, “I am a man of destiny,” but was actually Yiddish for “I am a flaming dumb ass.” The general also learned, “Ich hob de klenster poz in dem alvelt,” which he believed to be German for “Our people will someday rule the world,” but was actually Yiddish for “I have the smallest pecker in the universe.”

  “You realize, of course, that he will kill you if he ever figures out what you’re doing,” I said to Marshall.

  “Oh, for sure,” Marshall said. “But in the meantime it is so damn much fun.”

  In the months before my release, I was charting out a plan that would make me only a vapor trail by the time the general was released. I was receiving counseling from a prison minister, the Reverend Wilfred A. Lewis. Although it was his job to help prepare me for my return to society, when he questioned me about my past and future plans, he acted disinterested. Under a pair of untamed eyebrows, I’d often catch him staring into space for long moments at a time.

  During one of our meetings, the Reverend Lewis looked at some notes scrawled on a legal pad and said, “In our last meeting, you said you wanted to start your own excavation business. Is that still the case?”

  “It is,” I said.

  “Have you ever run your own business?” he asked, running his fingers tiredly through his thinning, greasy hair.

  I grinned and said, “I sold about two million dollars’ worth of cocaine the year before I got busted. Does that count?”

  He gave me an icy stare down the barrel of his beaked nose, from which I gathered that drug dealing didn’t count, at least not with Reverend Wilfred A. Lewis. “How will you start the business? It will take money.”

  “I was able to stash a little cash before I got arrested.”

  “How much?”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Enough to get an excavation business started.”

  “That will take a lot of money, will it not?”

  I shrugged.

  “Is this drug money?” he pressed.

  “Some of it, maybe . . .”

  “Put your faith in me, son. How much money are we talking about?”

  I told him, but not because I wanted to cleanse my soul or relieve any guilt. You know why I told him? Well, for one thing, because I’m a damned idiot. But mostly because I wanted to brag about how much money I had stashed. I had never told anyone about the cash, because the guys in prison would slit your throat for fifteen cents. Since he was a preacher, I assumed it was like talking to a lawyer: he wouldn’t repeat it. “Four hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars,” I proudly announced.

  He didn’t flinch. “That’s a lot of money,” he said calmly.

  “Yes it is. I was a good drug dealer.”

  “You should donate that to a worthy cause and start fresh.”

  I smiled. “You’re kidding, of course.”

  “I most certainly am not. It’s tainted. It’s drug money. Dirty money. Give it away. Start your new life with money unsoiled by your criminal past.”

  I nodded and said, “Okay, I’ll give that some thought.” A nanosecond later I was done thinking; there was no way in hell that was happening.

  Two hours later, the general stormed into our cell and said, “Colonel, what’s this I hear about you having four hundred and ­seventy-two thousand dollars stashed away?”

  I swallowed and made a mental note to strangle the preacher. “Is that important?”

  “Of course it’s important. As a colonel in the New Order of the Third Reich, you are obligated to contribute all personal goods and money to the cause.”

  “I don’t recall seeing that in the enlistment papers.”

  He laughed and whispered, “That kind of money will go a long way toward the purchase of weapons, fortifications, and air defense.”

  “And you’ll get it, General, every last penny.”

  He grinned and said, “Excellent.” He slapped me on the back and went off to lunch; I went looking for Lewis. “Hey, goddammit, what are you doing telling another convict about my money? You’re a preacher; aren’t you supposed to keep that kind of stuff to yourself?”

  “Ordinarily,” he said. “But I believe in the cause. When the general gets out, I’m going with him to the Aryan Republic of New Germania to be chaplain of the state.”

  “You realize, of course, there is no such place as the Aryan Republic of New Germania?”

  “Not yet, but there will be.”

  I stormed off, kicking myself in the ass for telling the chaplain of the state about the money. That bastard was the first person I ever told, and damned if it didn’t come back and bite me in the ass. The good pastor was a white supremacist.

  A month before I was to be released, the general sat me down in the cell and ordered me to roll a sheet of paper into my manual typewriter. “You type fast. I’m going to tell you my manifesto. You type it down.” As always when dealing with this beast of a human being, I did as he ordered. He dictated and I typed. It made me nervous just to have those words spilling forth from my fingers. He called his manifesto “Operation Adolph Lives.” He was going to assassinate the president, his cabinet, and every member of the US Congress. He would then declare war on the United States. He planned to poison the water supply in Washington, DC, and overtake the military. He would lynch every black man in the country. He would resurrect the concentration camps of Germany and enslave the Jews. What Jews he couldn’t work to death, he would gas. He would become president for life of the Aryan Republic of New Germania, which would occupy all of the current United States. At times, he would stop and say, “Read that back to me.” Then he would ask, “What do you think?”

  “Brilliant,” I would say. Or, “You are a born leader, General,” all the while thinking of how far I could be from the prison by the time he was released.

  He dictated his plans in painful detail. Dictated until my fingers cramped. Dictated such vile, hateful venom that I hated that my grandmother’s Underwood was being used for such a purpose. Dictated so that I had to change my ribbon twice. It was so terrifying that I pinched the clean sheets of typing paper with my fingernails so as to not leave fingerprints. After each page was typed, he would rip it from my typewriter and read it. As he read, I would carefully reload the Underwood and get ready for more details on the overthrow of the country.

  After nearly four days, he handed me three sheets of notebook paper, on which were scrawled the names of men and the cities in which they lived. “These are my compatriots across the country,” he said. “They are my loyal followers. When the time is right, they will form the heart of the New Order of the Third Reich. Type ’em up.”

  I did, alphabetically, and in the middle of the “D” list I added a name of my own—Daubner, Rayce; Steubenville, Ohio. Some
day, hopefully, the general would be arrested on the front lawn of the White House with a rocket launcher. When they looked through his belongings, Daubner’s name would be found as an associate. Oh, wouldn’t that be delightful?

  The general took the stack of papers—it must have been sixty pages, single-spaced—and slipped them to the preacher for safekeeping. “When I get out and return to the Aryan Republic of New Germania, I will hold a meeting of my top colonels. That’s when our plans will be revealed and Operation Adolph Lives will begin.”

  I hated the way he called them “our plans.”

  As I was leaving the cell the day of my release, the general said, “Now, Colonel, you stay in touch. I’ll be out in about six weeks.”

  I saluted and said, “Oh, I will, General. You can count on me.”

  My parents drove to Terre Haute and picked me up. It was Monday, July 10, 1989. I hadn’t seen my folks in three years; they had aged dramatically while I was in prison, which was largely my fault. I hoped they lived long enough to see me right the ship. I’m humiliated by my past, but, mostly, I’m sorry about the pain that I caused my parents. They were so proud and thought they had raised a future major-league-­baseball player. Instead, they had raised a career minor leaguer and a convicted drug dealer. Not long after my conviction, they bought a house in Dunedin, Florida. They said they wanted to escape the cold weather, but I think they wanted to escape the embarrassment.

  Mom was crying when the final set of steel doors swung open and I walked into the foyer. I had a gym bag in one hand and my Underwood in the other. Perhaps, I thought, I would have Dad pull off the road near a bridge so I could pitch the Underwood into a river: it was sullied by the words of the manifesto, and if the general’s hateful piece of trash was ever made public, I wanted no association with it. The cocaine conviction was bad enough; I didn’t need a treason charge, too.

  As I climbed into the backseat of the Buick, I spotted a bag from Mosblack’s Hobby Shop. In it were four car models, a set of model paint, a tube of glue, and a hobby knife. “This is thoughtful,” I said. Mom turned and smiled; I knew it was her idea. I slumped in the backseat on the way back to Steubenville, chatting easily with the folks. I was certainly glad to be out of prison but also nervous about going back home. I was a disappointment not only to my parents but also to the entire community. All I wanted to do was keep a low profile and avoid adding to my humiliation by running into people who had known me when I was the great Johnny Earl of the Steubenville Big Red.